Robert Reynolds, the founder of Southeast Portland's Chef Studio cooking school and a mentor to countless Portland chefs, died early Monday after battling lymphoma. He was 70.

Reynolds honed his cooking skills in San Francisco and France before moving to Portland in the late 1990s, where he became a philosophical leader to a new generation of chefs through cooking classes and regular kitchen collaborations.

"Robert is our poet," said the director of Reynolds' classroom-cum-supper club Chef Studio, Blake Van Roekle, who began working with Reynolds five years ago. "His legacy is profound and inspirational. His community stretches across countries. He is a teacher of teachers and a very special, dear man."

Reynolds' passion for teaching came naturally, according to Kerry DeBuse, a former owner of Genoa Restaurant, where Reynolds briefly served as a consulting executive chef in 2005. DeBuse considered Reynolds his best friend, and said that his love of teaching was inspirational to watch.

"Teaching was his life," DeBuse said. "He loved it, and there will be people who will pick up his legacy."

Van Roekle said Reynolds was first diagnosed with lymphoma three years ago, though he made a full recovery before the condition returned in April. In June, he announced he would stop fighting his cancer and let the disease take its course.

Van Roekle said Reynolds' death in his Southeast Portland home was quiet: "We're just very happy that he passed peacefully surrounded at home by friends and family and a very nice Armagnac."

Reynolds first gained attention with his San Francisco restaurant Le Trou, which in the early 1980s was the place on the West Coast to experience the feeling and tastes of France. Reynolds learned French cooking from culinary icon Madeleine Kamman and Josephine Araldo, San Francisco's most-famous Cordon Bleu chef.

Vitaly Paley said Monday that while they talked with other writers when they were first hatching plans for their cookbook, he and Kimberly hoped that Reynolds would be their eventual collaborator.

"I'd read things he'd written in the past, and they sent chills up my spine," he said. "Robert knew us so well and we saw things the same way. Robert carried our voice. He'd listen to what we had to say, and out would come these beautiful sentences. At the end of the book, I had learned how to write because of Robert's mentorship."

Reynolds also wrote a 2006 French culinary travelogue, "An Excuse to Be Together," which collected his own experiences with farmers, markets and winemakers through years of teaching and touring in France. Those personal stories inspired his work, Kimbery Paley said.

"He was a writer like no other," she said. "He had an amazing voice."

Reynolds ran Le Trou until 1996, and moved to Portland in 1999. During his first few months here, he stayed with DeBuse while he got his bearings in a new city.

"He was a perfect house guest," DeBuse recalled. "What was really amazing was to see him pick up his phone everyday and network."

View full sizeBrent Wojahn/The Oregonian/2001Robert Reynolds cooks during one of his Chef Studio Sunday Suppers in 2001.

Those initial Portland connections led to stints teaching French and Italian cuisine at local cooking schools, before he established Chef Studio in 2001. At first, the studio's classes were a series of Sunday Suppers, where he prepared menus that were rooted in regional French flavors from places such as Normandy and Auvergne.

Reynolds moved the studio several times before landing in a 600-square-foot kitchen space behind Ken's Artisan Pizza in 2007. There was a certain symmetry to the move: The pizzeria's owner, Ken Forkish, said Reynolds had helped him when they first met more than a decade ago.

"Robert was the first person I met in the Portland food scene," Forkish said. "He gave me introductions to Greg Higgins, Kenny Giambalvo, Vito DiLullo, Cathy Whims, John Taboada. Robert was my intro to the people who are now my friends. He had a very strong sense of community. And, boy, he had a lot of heart."

Earlier this month, Reynolds made one last visit to France, accompanied by chefs Taboada, Christopher Israel and pastry chef Kristen Murray. Before leaving, Kimberly Paley said that Reynolds' outlook was upbeat.

"He came to dinner at our house right before he left for France," she said. "We talked about living and life -- positive things. There was no discussion about ending. It was all about things continuing. He was going there to live and see and smell and eat."

Murray said that Reynolds' final trip to France, which ended just a few weeks ago, was physically challenging for the chef, but included high points, like Champagne and oysters in Paris, and visiting old friends in the French countryside.

"It was wonderful to see Robert being visited by so many old friends," she said. "You could just see how happy he was."

Reynolds is survived by two brothers and a sister. Funeral and memorial service arrangements are pending.